The English Language

[Ladymuck]

Some of you have, no doubt, already seen this...but I have just received it from a friend (who's Austrian) as part of her email...I thought it would be fun to reproduce it here.

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School Teachers take note!!

ONLY THE ENGLISH COULD HAVE INVENTED THIS LANGUAGE

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,

But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,

Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,

Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,

Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,

And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,

Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,

Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,

And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother and also of brethren,

But though we say mother, we never say methren.

Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,

But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;

neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England ..

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,

we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,

and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,

grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends

and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English

should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.

We have noses that run and feet that smell.

We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,

while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language

in which your house can burn up as it burns

down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out,

and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT IF PEOPLE FROM POLAND ARE CALLED POLES THEN

PEOPLE FROM HOLLAND SHOULD BE HOLES AND THE GERMANS GERMS!!!

[HonaloochieB]

I think it was George Bernard-Shaw who said that according to the English a corect way of spelling the word 'fish' would be 'ghoti'.

Based on the 'gh' from 'rough', the 'o' from 'women' and the 'ti' from 'ignition'.

Though the ghucker may have potied-up at the time.

[matthew123]

Ha, very good

Here is one from George Bush and Condeleeza Rice in the Oval office back in 2005

http://this.org/blog/2005/10/19/hu-is-the-new-leader-of-china/

George Bush: "Condoleeza! Nice to see you. What's happening?" Condoleeza Rice: "Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China."

George: "Great. Lay it on me."

Condoleeza: "'Hu' is the new leader of China."

George: "That's what I want to know."

Condoleeza: "That's what I'm telling you."

George: "That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?"

Condoleeza: "Yes."

George: "I mean the fellow's name."

Condoleeza: "Hu."

George: "The guy in China."

Condoleeza: "Hu."

George: "The new leader of China."

Condoleeza: "Hu."

George: "The Chinaman!"

Condoleeza: "Hu is leading China."

George: "Now whaddya' asking me for?"

Condoleeza: "I'm telling you Hu is leading China."

George: "Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?"

Condoleeza: "That's the man's name."

George: "That's whose name?"

Condoleeza: "Yes."

George: "Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of China?"

Condoleeza: "Yes, sir."

George: "Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the Middle East."

Condoleeza: "That's correct."

George: "Then who is in China?"

Condoleeza: "Yes, sir."

George: "Yassir is in China?"

Condoleeza: "No, sir."

George: "Then who is?"

Condoleeza: "Yes, sir."

George: "Yassir?"

Condoleeza: "No, sir."

George: "Look, Condoleeza. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone."

Condoleeza: "Kofi?"

George: "No, thanks."

Condoleeza: "You want Kofi?"

George: "No."

Condoleeza: "You don't want Kofi."

George: "No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N."

Condoleeza: "Yes, sir."

George: "Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N."

Condoleeza: "Kofi?"

George: "Milk! Will you please make the call?"

Condoleeza: "And call who?"

George: "Who is the guy at the U.N?"

Condoleeza: "Hu is the guy in China."

George: "Will you stay out of China?!"

Condoleeza: "Yes, sir."

George: "And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N."

Condoleeza: "Kofi."

George: "All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone."

[Ladymuck]

Now that is funny Matthew...especially as it's so utterly believable!

Ha ha, I can actually hear George Dubbayah Bush saying it.

Thanks.

[HAL9000]

Reminiscent of the classic

[PeckhamRose]

Friend of a friend taught English as a Second Language.

One day a very irritated student said "You think I know fcuk nothing, but I know fcuk ALL"

[Brendan]

Hamburgers are called hamburgers because sandwiches of a bun and a ground beef patty were first popularised in Hamburg (New York) not because they have any ham in them.

So terms like beef burger, chicken burger, lamb burger, fish burger and veggie burger are all misnomers. As indeed is the word burger unless you?re speaking Dutch or Afrikaans and what you mean is citizen.

I?m not quite sure where I stand on cheeseburger.

I don?t know why but this is really important to me.

Now if you?ll excuse me I?m sure I had a life around here somewhere.

[HonaloochieB]

This all stems from that sandwich of bun and ground beef patty you had at the Grand Union the other day, doesn't it Brendan?

[Brendan]

You's one of them cyber stalkers innit.

[Magpie]

Few issues with this:

This is a critique of American English not English

eg

Eggplant is known as Aubergine in England - only the yanks call it eggplant

What on earth is a parkway?

A wise guy is hardly an English term

I have never heard of English muffins?

and so on . . . . . . . .

vans not Truck

[RosieH]

Magpie Wrote:

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> I have never heard of English muffins?

You've never heard of english muffins???

[SimonM]

The point is, those are not "English muffins", but simply "muffins". The Americans hijacked the word for their calorie-rich, over-large buns...

Come to think of it they hijacked "buns" too....:)

[Ladymuck]

SimonM Wrote:

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> The point is, those are not "English muffins", but

> simply "muffins". The Americans hijacked the word

> for their calorie-rich, over-large buns...

>

> Come to think of it they hijacked "buns" too....:)

Ah, who gives a damn...so long as they taste delicious...I think I might make some at the weekend...haven't made them in years.

[silverfox]

Have to admit though, English does have a funny way with words.

Eg, "Scientists capture world's first images of baby coelacanth fish - dubbed a 'living fossil'

[Brendan]

So the term ?a living fossil? means ?baby coelacanth fish? in which language?

[silverfox]

Dead fossil language, or is that living non-fossil language?

[Brendan]

Coelacanths are the last of the clade of 4 finned fish from which the first land vertebrates evolved. They were assumed extinct until someone caught one off the coast of South Africa about seventy years ago.

Although I think Englishshis nonsensicalisity comes more from it being a relatively young mishmash of much older languages with a Western Germanic grammar but a vocabulary that borrows heavily from two different major Romance influences over the last two millennia as well as two distinct branches of Celtic. Rather than it being antiquated and piscine (which is posh for old and fishy).

Of course I could be completely wrong. Come to think of it this post is nothing other than a pointless aid to my own procrastination.